Delerious?
Saw Delerious last night at Overlake. Those guys are awesome. They just have a way of drawing you in. They draw you in and point you towards Jesus. Some of their songs are ones that would never work in our church as a congregational song. They talk about issues in their songs and then bring them to the cross. I'd have to say that I loved it.
Rebecca St James was opening. OK. Never really was my favorite music, but her band was really tight.
Vicky Beeching? Where was she? She was on the billing, but not the concert. They didn't even say anything about it. Weird.
"That's a Good Idea" or "Not Worthy to Say You're Worthy"
In Vietnamese culture you never tell an older person “that’s a good idea.” Even if it is a good idea you wouldn’t say that. For the younger to say that to the older would put the younger on a higher plane. It’s the idea that only the experienced can approve of the less experienced work or idea. For a less experienced person to approve of a more experienced person’s idea would be saying that they know more than the elder. I heard this from a recent podcast of Leonard Sweet.
It has me thinking about a couple things. First, I’m thinking about how I treat elders and people with more experience. Now sometimes the eldest is not always the one with more experience. I’m willing to bet that in Vietnam things don’t actually play out that way, but it’s the concept of an instilled value. I need to repent because I often conclude that what I’m thinking is the best way to approach something. The core of this is humility, something I’m not born with and need a lot of help. One person who helped me a lot was my high school band director, John Georgeson. I don’t even remember what I did; I probably was so proud that I never even realized I did something at the moment. But he took me aside after a rehearsal and said, “If you don’t change your prima donna attitude today, you will not be playing in this band tomorrow.” And that jazz band really was my life. I could go on with other stories about my often hard road to humility but I don’t want to start crying.
Second, I’m thinking about my relationship with God. The title of Len Sweet’s podcast is Not Worthy to say “You’re Worthy.” Could this old Vietnamese adage be applicable to how I view God? What am I saying when I say that He is “worthy of my praise?” It’s an often used phrase in Christian culture, especially in praise music. Is it like telling God “that’s a good idea?” In my initial search through scripture, the closest I found to this was the four creatures in heaven declaring “Worthy is he Lamb that was slain,” and the four creatures and twenty four elders proclaiming “Though art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.” (Both references are in Rev 4.) However, I don’t see someone like me telling God that He is worthy of MY praise. Who am I to say that my praise is something that I need to decide whether or not God is worthy of?
In response to my own question though, God does give us a choice to praise him. And that may be why songwriters use that terminology. But should we make a distinction between us choosing to praise Him, and us finding Him worthy of praise? Is it just semantics or does it matter? Got me thinking.
Thoughts on The Good Life
What is the good life? What is good in life? I know that in our culture the good life would commonly be described as a cush job, a big house, a boat, a sport car and a membership at the club. I agree that all sounds pretty good. But often the good life is at a great cost.
How many hours do we work to pay for all those things? How much of our energy is spent? How much of our emotion is put into it? And on an enviromental level, how much of our planets resources are we using up?
Does making more money give you more freedom?
Sometimes I wonder if life was better before computers.
What if all of our decisions were made for a good life? What if the good life was not measured by how much you accumulate, but by how much you gave? What if the true sign of a good life was not the car you drive or the house you live in, or the veiw from it; but a true sign was a healthy relationship. What if the good life was made up of love. That's cheasy.
Challenge: Give up something that you love, but don't need. Let me know what it is and how your excperience goes.
I'm going to give up pop for one week. This is hard because we just got a case of Diet Cherry Coke and I love it. I'll let you know how it goes.
Democratization of Luxury
I had the opportunity to hear
Tom Sine talking about the democratization of luxury. This is a trend over the past few decades for the normalization of luxury items. With a little push from the advertising world of pop culture came the idea that everyone deserves at least a little bit of the high life. You need it. Not only do you need it, but you have a right to it. You deserve it. Even though you make $30,000/yr you have a right to buy a $25,000 sport car. This is America and this is how we live.
I have found myself getting caught up in this thinking. I started thinking about the decision that Dawn and I made last year to buy her car. We had enough money from insurance on her old car to buy something nice and reliable, just not very cool. So we made the decision to buy a cooler car for more and take out a loan for part of it. Now we make minimum payments every month.
Some people have the money and that’s awesome. But that’s not the majority of Americans. The majority are in this middle class. And though we may not be rich, we deserve to live like it!
Naturally there are some inevitable outcomes to this lifestyle. Like credit! Eventually most things get paid for…but along the road are many payments. It would take too long to save up those payments and buy it in cash down the road. By that time you may not even want it anymore because it would be out of style. The freedom to buy now and pay eventually (and after a lot of interest) has made slaves of many. Many people are only paying for the interest and not even getting out of dept. That’s the case in our mortgage. Interest only. I know it’s the worst kind of loan to get but that was the only way we could get into the housing market here.
I’m going to write a couple more times on the subject, but here’s a question to think about until then. How has credit affected your life? And what luxury items do you need? Or maybe you don’t think it is a luxury item, it’s just something everyone has, but almost everyone takes out a loan to get. (Motorcycles don’t fall into that category, they are a necessity to life.)
Confession
I'm into Pastor Jim's series on intimacy with God. Intimacy is something that we all long for. From God and from people. Last weekend he talked about confession in our lives.
Confession isn't my favorite word. Although Pastor Jim also talked about the confession of Christ, that isn't what most people think of when they think of confession. I think about how I've done so much wrong and have a lot to repent of. It's pretty encouraging to talk about confession.
I think of it close to how I would if there were something between friends. What is sin but something that gets inbetween our relationship with God? Something that separates us from Him. Like when there is something between me and a friend. It’s weird to talk, and I avoid that person if possible. Conversations that are had during the period that some issue has come between us feel like they don’t even count. They're just superficial. It’s hard to be close when that happens. It isn’t until we have that pivotal point of reconciliation that the relationship progresses. Confession then is a point of vulnerability to be real with God. God knows what happened. But it’s hard for me to pursue intimacy with God until a confession has happened. That's why God tells us to confess our sins (1 John 1:9.) Confession isn’t a contract to get God back on my side. It's not a payment. It’s for me to be vulnerable enough that I let God reveal himself again.
